It's unfortunate that the type of "directed discussion" you are referring to works so well. It drives so much engagement to the comment it ends up derailing threads on other sites, i.e. 1000 comments but only a handful of top level ones. I doubt the number of commenters that read like they took a page out of the online misinformation manuals are actually on a payroll to do so, but damn I sure am seeing this stuff often lately.